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My son loves to help me string beads for beaded kumihimo projects! Get 'em started young! Addicted to kumihimo? Me? Well, I guess admitting that I have a problem would be the first step. Yes, since I learned how to do beaded kumihimo at Bead Fest Philadelphia a few years ago, my bead orders suddenly...

At the end of a long, cold winter, I'm just itching to see the first signs of spring: sap buckets hanging from maple trees as the daytime temperatures rise above freezing (hooray!), sunny skies behind my favorite mountains as I drive through the Adirondack High Peaks, more eggs from our flock of...

Try your hand with vibrant beads, macramé and wire wrapping with long-time Bead Fest Spring instructor, Debra Saucier. With Debra’s expertise in wire work and jewelry-making you will leave her workshops feeling refreshed with knowledge and ready to create pieces on your own! All projects...

Of all the styles of beaded jewelry I make, beaded brooches used to come last on my list of preferred beading projects. But no more! After looking at the gorgeous free beaded brooch projects we've chosen for our latest free eBook, I'm inspired to start making more of these beauties to accent...

Like a lot of bead-weavers I know, I got started making jewelry by learning how to string beads. Once I started learning how to do off-loom bead-weaving, though, I started looking for creative ways to combine my bead stitching with my bead stringing skills. Fifteen years later, I still love finding new...

Ever since I first learned how to bead more than fourteen years ago, I've enjoyed creating bead crafts for the holidays. From my very first pair of tubular right-angle weave Christmas wreath earrings to my more recent sparkling holiday beaded jewelry projects, I love to spend time during the holiday...

Ever since 1991, when my sister and I managed to talk our parents into letting us put up the holiday decorations over Thanksgiving weekend, I've been one of those people who breaks out the Christmas music a few weeks before Halloween. My 6-year-old loves it, my husband, not so much. So this year...

For most of us, our introduction to beaded ropes came by way of making tubular versions of our favorite off-loom bead-weaving stitches, or by creating a classic spiral rope. There's something incredible about watching a few rounds of bead stitching turn into a fabulous beaded rope. Beaded ropes have...

A couple of months ago at Bead Fest Philadelphia, I agreed to do a wire jewelry-making demo for our friends at Parawire, and I knew that I needed to find a wire jewelry project that would be quick, easy, and used at least a couple of beads. So what else would I do? I picked up my pliers and started practicing...

I've always thought that chevron stitch is like the Cinderella of the bead-weaving world: you might not think that it looks like much at first glance, but once you see just how many things you can do with this off-loom bead-weaving stitch, you'll find yourself using it for everything! Chevron...

Houndstooth check bracelet by Carol Dean Sharpe I love to design my own bead-weaving projects. Even if it's just something as simple as a bracelet made from embellished spiral rope, or a right-angle weave necklace made with seed beads and Czech glass pearls, one thing that I'm always on the lookout...

I love making beaded necklaces, and when I sit down to design a piece, it's usually a necklace. For a few years, my necklace making projects were all big, bold, and showy -- the bigger, the better. But lately, I'm starting to think differently about how I like my necklaces. There's a lot...

One of my beadweaving friends recently had a baby. I wanted to make her a small gift that would showcase her love of beads and would be fairly quick to make. Seed beads and babies don't mix well, so I knew anything I made had to be sturdy and kept in a place that would be away from little grabby...

A rainbow of seed beads at the Whimbeads bead show booth! I'll never forget the first time I sat down to make jewelry with seed beads. I'd tried all kinds of other jewelry-making techniques: mixed media, wire wrapping, polymer clay...but none of them really captured my imagination, and I never...